MOCA Los Angeles’s Board Adds Four, Including Lari Pittman

Lari Pittman, An American Place, 1986, which is in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.

MOCA LOS ANGELES

Changes are afoot at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, which announced this morning that it has added four members to its board: businessman Gabriel Brener, philanthropist Mary Klaus Martin, artist Lari Pittman, and hedge-fund manager and art collector Adam Sender. (Disclosure: a part owner of this publication, Peter Brant, is also a member of the board.) Carolina Miranda had the news first, in the Los Angeles Times.

“I am grateful and proud that MOCA leadership continues to create a board that is reflective of MOCA’s programmatic commitments,” MOCA’s director, Philippe Vergne, said in a statement. “We are international, we are a group committed to contemporary art and design, and we strive to become a better artist’s museum.”

Pittman joins a board with five other high-profile artists as members: John Baldessari, Mark Bradford, Mark Grotjahn, Barbara Kruger, and Catherine Opie. That deep artist bench is notable since, in 2012, Baldessari, Opie, Kruger, and Ed Ruscha resigned from the board to protest the museum’s direction under then-director, Jeffrey Deitch. Baldessari, Opie, and Kruger rejoined the institution in 2014, the same year that Grotjahn and Bradford came on board.

In other news, I am now going to go reread this great interview between Pittman and L.A.–based critic David Pagel that ran in Bomb in 1991.